


Galactic Visuality

by mazurka



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Canon-Typical Awfulness, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 21:41:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18764788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mazurka/pseuds/mazurka
Summary: The life and times of Morty Smith, cosmic stooge.





	Galactic Visuality

**Author's Note:**

> “Galactic visuality is one of the earliest human aesthetics, extending back in time well before its formalization in the zodiac and constellations . . . What defines this perception, however, is a reversal of vision in which it is the stars that look down on us and hold us in their blinding field of vision. This is the fear so uncannily represented by [Isaac] Asimov that as individuals and as a whole living species we are caught and immobilized in this remorseless gaze of the heavens . . . .”   
>  —Fredric Jameson, [_Archaeologies of the Future_](https://www.versobooks.com/books/243-archaeologies-of-the-future)
> 
> Some scenes are context-specific for the period between 03x02 and 03x03.

“Holy shit, Morty, run!”

Morty chances a backward look, choking on his own panic when he sees one of the giant centipedes gaining on him. It skitters on its many legs in a way that makes Morty’s skin crawl. He aims his blaster as he runs, shooting wildly and catching glimpses of flesh and carapace being ripped apart, and severed insect limbs twitching in goo, the sight of the disfigured creature now more horrifying than when it had been whole.

Rick seizes his arm and makes an abrupt turn, skidding into a hidden alcove. There is a section of Morty’s forearm that might be permanently bruised from Rick’s constant manhandling.

“Quick, Morty, you gotta stick your hand down your throat.” Rick grabs Morty’s shoulders and shakes him for emphasis. “Th-there’s no time to explain, but I’ve embedded a bio-grenade in your esophagus. It’s a pupa that grows into a living explosive, Morty, and i-i-it should be fully mature by now. That baby’s our ticket outta here.”

“W-w-what the hell, Rick!” Morty splutters, hands flying protectively to his throat. “You can’t just—just impregnate me with bombs! I keep telling you to stop experimenting on me when I’m asleep!”

“Jesus, Morty, do you want to live or do you want to fucking monologue about ethics in sentient-weapon incubation, huh? ‘Cause those fucking bugs don’t quit. They’ll hunt us through every single fucking galaxy, so you can either die on your fancy little high horse or live to bitch another day.”

Morty sighs miserably. “God, Rick, you’re the worst. Fine, just get it out.”

Rick unceremoniously sticks his entire hand in Morty’s mouth and past his tonsils. Morty gags hard around the intrusion, eyes tearing up as bile gushes up around Rick’s fingers. The awful taste of stomach acid combined with Rick’s hand spelunking in his throat triggers a rush of vomit, some of which pours out of his mouth.

“Ugh, gross, Morty,” Rick complains with a grimace. “You gotta work on your gag reflex.”

“Fuck you,” Morty tries to say, but it comes out as muffled retching.

At last, Rick pulls his hand out, clutching something that wiggles in his vomit-covered fist. “Aw yeah,” he shouts, striding out of their hiding spot. “Who wants a piece of Rick Sanchez, motherfucker?”

Wiping his mouth with his shirt, Morty barely manages to look up in time to see Rick fling the creature—grenade Morty Junior?—out of sight. There is a deafening sound and the air instantly becomes scorching and dense. It triggers a sense memory of having most of his flesh melted off by a lava monster, but Morty has only a second to panic before Rick opens a portal and hauls him through it.

* * *

Another day, another vodka-scented puke puddle to clean off the garage floor.

Rick is swaying on his feet, one hand holding his flask and one hand clamping Morty’s shoulder like a vice. “You know, Morty, I’ll tell you—here’s a little advice from Grandpa: Don’t trust the government, Morty. They’re leeches, M-Morty, they’re bloodsucking bureaucrat motherfuckers. They got no vision. They’re doing paint-by-numbers, but they think they’re—they're Michel-fucking-angelo. I-I know you’ve got a real boner for institutions, Morty, they really get your dick hard, but y-y-you know what kinda—what type o' people form institutions?”

“Bloodsucking bureaucrats, I know,” Morty mutters, squirming a little under the tightness of Rick’s grip.

“That’s right, son.” Rick belches wetly and throws his flask off to the side. He grabs Morty’s head with both hands, tilting his face up to force eye contact. His long, calloused fingers dig into Morty’s skin as if to reach into his skull. “They’ve got—they can’t take a fucking dump without voting on it first. Th-th-they’re just morons who don’t have the balls or brains to do shit on their own, so they fucking band together like little Boy Scouts and pool their stupidity. You know what that gets you, Morty? Do you? Exponential stupidity, Morty, a fucking black hole of stupidity. A black hole’s like a fuckin’—a fuckin’ space anus, a reverse anus, like those goddamn butt-face people. You know, Morty, those people with butts for faces? They eat through their anuses, Morty. Their anuses are their f-fucking mouths, Morty. They’re reverse fucking anuses.”

“Okay, Rick,” Morty says, trying to tug his grandfather’s hands away. “Can you let go? Y-y-you’re hurting me.”

“You can’t trust The Man, Morty, you get me? You can’t trust any of those slippery motherfuckers. You gotta stick with me, M-M-Morty, fight ‘em off together. It’s you and me, Morty, you and me and nobody else, got it? After we blow them up, we’ll—”

“Goddamnit, Rick, not—”

“Shh, it’ll be quick, buddy. Th-th-they won’t even feel it. It’ll be just like going to sleep, e-except it’s instantaneous in-incineration.” Rick’s arms fall to his sides and he suddenly collapses, slumping his weight on Morty. “Christ, Morty, I’m so fucking—fucking drunk.”

“Yeah, n-no shit, Rick.” Morty struggles to set Rick down as gently as he can, and sets about arranging his limbs in recovery position. All the while, Rick continues to mumble about various potential apocalypses he could orchestrate.

If Rick were not so brutally adept at curb-stomping any momentary sympathy that he inspires, then Morty might feel almost warmed by Rick’s drunken rambling about annihilating everyone on the planet except the two of them. It is both thrilling and nauseating to be wanted so much and so exclusively by someone. But why bother granting sympathy to a man who would snatch it from Morty’s hands and pervert it just to hurt him?

He is only a Morty, though, so what can he do? Rick has the advantage, and Morty is predisposed to love him with the helpless, instinctive love of family. He can only roll his sleeves up to disarm yet another shoddy bomb, and roll his eyes at Rick’s slurred words about worldwide extermination, which had seemed inhumanly evil, once upon a time.

* * *

Sometimes, Morty thinks about how he would kill Rick. If he waits until Rick is sleeping, or passed out from a bender, then it would only take one shot with a disintegrator for a clean execution. 

But, knowing Rick, if Morty tries it, some defence android would pop out of the wall and shoot him first, or Rick’s many body mods would autonomically neutralise the threat, or the murder would trigger the release of a fucking Rick clone with fully uploaded memories who would exact painful vengeance on his grandson.

He remembers standing amid the chaos of the crumbling Citadel and shooting Rick in the head, crowing over the body with adrenaline-fuelled exhilaration. Perhaps later, there would have been room for remorse; at the time, there was nothing but triumph. Of course, it hadn’t been real. He should have known that he wouldn’t be allowed to have the last word.

Maybe, on one of their adventures, he won’t reach out his hand when Rick needs him. He would stand by and watch while Rick dangles from a ledge or gets gobbled up by some giant space squid. Same result, less culpability.

But, again, Rick would probably save himself with some hidden rocket boots, or find a way to blow up the squid using its own intestinal fluids, and then torment Morty for failing the test of loyalty.

It is so easy to hate Rick when swept up in a wave of rage. Morty only falters afterwards, when he can’t help but think of the proud approval in Rick’s eyes when Morty impresses him, Rick’s resigned scowl that signals the moment he gives in to one of Morty’s requests, or the visceral relief he feels when Rick shows up to save the day.

“Come on, Morty,” he would say, silhouetted dramatically in the doorway of whichever seedy compound where Morty was being held hostage. “Time to blow this joint.”

And in that moment, Morty would feel, with illogical certainty, that he would be all right. Even when it is a mess Rick himself created, even though his solution might be more awful than the problem, and even though he will always reveal that saving Morty was merely ancillary to some personal gain, Morty can’t help his fucked-up faith in his fucked-up, demonic god of a grandpa.

* * *

Morty never knows what he is getting into when it comes to Rick. Sometimes, a trip to collect illegal substances is relatively painless, but sometimes, it spawns a carnival of nightmares.

Rick had been practically salivating over a plant species on a small backwater planet that could produce a highly potent drug. Morty had spent the better part of a week murdering small rodents in order to feed their livers to the carnivorous plants.

“These things are real picky little fuckers, Morty. They won’t mutate properly without Skenxlour livers—th-they’ll be normal and useless, so you gotta kill those rats, Morty. Y-y-you gotta shank the hell outta those alien rats and tear out their livers for science.”

“Aw, man, th-th-that sounds really cruel. Couldn’t we just do some—do a little surgery or something and just take half a liver? So we won’t have to kill them?”

“Do I look like a fucking v-ve—animal doctor? Don’t be such a tight-ass. You know how many dogs they had to kill to discover insulin? N-not that I would stoop to dog-killing, but you get the analogy. Anyway, I-I-I don’t see you preaching about the animals that died so you could eat their rotting carcasses at the dinner table. You’re complicit in animal death every day, so stop being a little bitch and start skewering some rats.”

Now, after much blood and sacrificed livers, Rick finally deems the plants ready for relocation.

“Listen up,” Rick commands. “You see that palace over there?” He points to a hill in the distance, on top of which sits a shiny purple structure. “We’ve gotta bring these things there.”

“Um, why?”

“Because, Morty, a genius told you to. Now, help me pack these up so we can shrink ‘em.”

One trek and one outfit change later, Morty finds himself standing in front of a huge purple door. Rick had forced him into a lime green leotard with the insistence that it was considered standard for entertainers’ assistants here, and they are currently presenting themselves as minstrels to the dubious palace guards.

“You don’t look like any musicians _I’ve_ seen from the guild,” one of the guards says, scrutinising them with hostility. The guards look frog-like and each has a different number of legs. 

Rick sneers and reaches into his lab coat. _Oh boy_ , Morty thinks, and braces himself for a fight. To his surprise, Rick takes out a mandolin from one of his physics-defying inner pockets, launching into a crude ballad about orgies and dysentery. Morty joins in nervously, trying to vocalise in harmony. They give a pretty dismal performance, but it seems to satisfy the guards, who finally allow them to enter.

“Rick, are we gonna have to sing again?” Morty whispers as they are guided through the halls. “We r-really should’ve at least picked some songs beforehand.”

“Shut up, Morty,” Rick says dismissively. “This’ll be a breeze. Trust me.”

“Okay,” Morty says, and tries not to think too hard about whether he actually does.

Soon enough, they are ushered into a room where a feast is taking place. Bioluminescent jellyfish glide through the air, pink and serene, casting a soft glow on the royal family, who are seated at a long dining table and are gorging themselves on an array of strange foods.

Rick and Morty shuffle over to where some other performers are congregated, with acrobats and a theatre troupe among their number. One of the costumed aliens looks somewhat girl-shaped. It is hard to tell how old she is or even what that age would mean when he doesn’t know their average lifespans. Still, that has never stopped Morty where anyone or anything akin to a girl is concerned. Plus, she is kind of cute, in a froggish way.

“Hi, I’m Morty,” he says. “Me and my grandpa are, uh, we’re musicians. I-i-it sure is a big celebration going on here, huh?”

The girl looks at him with pitying distaste. “Uh huh.”

Slightly abashed, Morty perseveres. “W-w-what’s your name?”

“Shartinella,” she replies tonelessly.

“Oh, that—that’s . . . pretty?” Morty says. He is about to continue gamely when Rick’s voice cuts through the air like a foghorn.

“Ladies and gentleman,” he announces, throwing his miniature plants in the air and zapping them with his matter gun so they are normal-sized when they land. “Get fucked!”

For an anticlimactic moment, nothing happens. Someone farts. At the table, the alien with the smallest crown stands in a rush and says disbelievingly, “Is that Rick Sanchez? From that terrible band?”

That’s when the first person falls to the floor. The room is silent, all attention focussed on the convulsing alien. It looks like there is something wriggling underneath his skin, as if worms are writhing and causing little undulating protrusions all along his body that stretch his skin grotesquely. He is whimpering, clutching and pawing at the moving lumps like he is trying to push them flat. A crystalline rock cluster, red as rubies, erupts from one cheek, the skin gaping open limply around it. Blue fluid leaks from the wound.

It all devolves quickly after that, hideous and inexorable. Morty watches in petrified revulsion as clumps of crystals burst out all over the alien’s body, stretching and tearing until it is just misshapen skin and viscera draped over crystals, with some random intact body parts sitting amid the lacerated meat—an eye, a hand, and a shoulder—that look fake in their incongruous wholeness.

Then, the screams start: horror that morphs into panic and pain as transformations overtake everyone in the room. Morty’s senses are bombarded by the sound of flesh tearing and the cloying scent of vanilla, which seems to increase in proportion to the amount of inky blue blood that is spilled.

Something hits Morty, and he turns to see a severed arm on the floor. Looking up, he realises that it is the girl from earlier. Crystals are protruding from her shoulder where her arm should be. She stares down at her severed limb on the floor, as if mesmerised. Then, the next cluster splits open her stomach, and she staggers backwards like she was punched. Smooth, rubbery organs slide out, some catching on the sharp rocks and swinging, barely attached by intestinal cords. Struggling for breath, she happens to make eye contact with Morty. He is looking into her eyes when a wide cluster of rocks breaks through her head and rips a hole where her face had been. The skin that had covered her skull dangles loosely like a piece of deli meat hanging from her chin. Morty can discern a wrinkled part that must have been her nose. He feels numb down to his fingertips.

When it is finally over, the room is like some fantastical art exhibit. The crystals look like giant rock candy, as richly red as human blood. Surrounded by puddles of deep blue, it would almost be lovely, if not for the mangled bodies. The heavy vanilla scent is suffocating.

“Well,” Rick says, breaking the silence. “Mission accomplished.”

It takes Morty a few tries to speak as he struggles first to surface from the shock, and then to rein in his rage. 

“What the _fuck_ , Rick? Why the _fuck_ —w-w- _why_?” he yells, walking towards Rick on wobbly legs. He grabs him by the lapels of his lab coat and tries to yank him down, to shake him.

“Calm down, Morty,” Rick says, batting his hands away. 

Morty grabs him again. “ _Calm down_? Are you fucking kidding me? Th-th-that was horrible, Rick! Why did you do that to these people? They weren’t even trying to hurt us! A-a-and what about—what about us? Are the plants gonna do that to us, too?”

“Don’t be an idiot. Carbon-based organisms make terrible hosts for their ballistospores. W-we’re safe, thanks to our useless Earth bodies.” He shakes Morty off and kneels next to a corpse. He grabs onto a rock cluster stemming from the destroyed torso and wrenches it off the body. “Come on, Morty. We gotta collect these crystals.”

Morty gapes at him. “You can’t just murder people and use their bodies to grow drugs!”

“I can and I did, Morty. Besides, it’s two birds with one stone. That king was a real asshole. Like, Charles I levels of dumb monarch. Either parliament or a popular uprising w-w-would’ve fucked him soon, anyway, so unclench your sphincter.” Rick takes out a sack and drops the crystals into it.

“B-b-but what about everyone else? His family! Th-th-the performers!” Morty splutters. “Rick, did you kill his entire family because he didn’t like your _band_?”

“Morty, don’t get all up in my backstory just ‘cause you struck out with that girl. L-l-let me tell you, these people are polypedal chauvinists. You only got two legs, so you never stood a chance. Get it? _Stood_ a chance?” Rick chuckles, then stands and glares down at Morty. “Now, stop whining and pitch in, or I’ll leave you here.”

Morty balls his hands into fists and glares back. “Screw you, Rick. Y-y-you’re a real bastard.”

“Yeah, yeah, tell it to a Rick who gives a shit.” He gestures pointedly to a large rock cluster on the nearest corpse. 

Morty sighs and resigns himself to doing what Rick wants, as usual. 

* * *

Making requests of Rick is a delicate art that Morty has yet to master, but he takes his life in his hands and does it anyway. When he pokes his head into the living room, he spots Rick sprawled on the couch, one arm slung over the back and feet propped up on the coffee table. Summer sits at the other end, preoccupied with her phone. 

“Um, hey, Rick?” Morty walks up to him, shrinking a little when Rick turns and eyes him like an experiment that hasn’t yet yielded useful results. “You know how last week, y-you were making that perfume? The one that’s supposed to make people do what you want?”

Summer raises an eyebrow and says, without looking up, “Grandpa Rick was making perfume?”

Rick scowls. “No, you asswipes; Grandpa was doing chemistry. It’s a psychoactive compound that reduces inhibition, like thiopental, but spruced up with Yooflambrian DNA and a bunch of shit that’s been banned in this galaxy, so it morphs according to individual body chemistry and memories. It’ll make you hallucinate whatever makes you amenable to suggestion.”

Summer puts her phone down briefly to give Rick a considering look. “So . . . you’re making illegal drugs in the garage.”

“Wow, look at you—a regular Sherlock Holmes whipping out those deductions like a massive fucking schlong!” Rick says, with excessive sarcasm more befitting a tween than a senior citizen.

“I won’t tell Mom if you get me a spa day with Beyoncé.” Summer crosses her arms and stares him down.

“Oh, please. You think your mom hasn’t seen me do worse? Go ahead.”

“She passed out face-first in a bowl of burnt pasta yesterday, and she definitely had Dad’s contact page open on her phone. Who knows what might trigger a total meltdown?”

“Geez, Summer, m-maybe you shouldn’t use Mom as a bargaining chip for celebrity hangouts?” Morty interjects. This new, conspicuously jaded Summer still makes him feel uneasy.

“You really hold a man’s nuts to the fire, Satan’s little helper. Fine, I’ll do it.” He turns his attention to Morty. “What do _you_ want my shit for, anyway? I thought you learned your lesson about using glorified roofies to get laid.”

“No, Rick, th-th-that’s not—I’m not—”

“What the fuck?” Summer says sharply, levelling a hostile glare at Morty. “I swear to God, Morty, if you’re doing some gross rapey shit, I will cut your dick off myself.”

“I-I’m not roofie-ing anyone!” Morty shouts, flushing in embarrassment. Having Jessica’s adoration, courtesy of Rick’s love potion, was amazing, but in retrospect, it was kind of a douchey thing to do. Not to mention the resultant apocalypse. “I-I-I just want the guidance counsellor to get off my case about . . . um . . .”

Rick narrows his eyes. “What have you been talking to a guidance counsellor about, Morty?”

“N-nothing! I didn’t choose to go. The teacher made me ‘cause of, um, problems.” He gestures vaguely to his pelvic area, flushing even harder and praying that he won’t have to actually talk about repeatedly pissing his pants at school. He is half-convinced that Rick already knows, in his creepy, nigh omniscient way, and that Summer does, too, through school gossip.

Apparently, Rick doesn’t know, because he responds with a scoff. “That’s it? They’re mad at you for getting a boner in class? Tell them to fuck off.”

“Please, Rick, c-can’t you just give me a little bit? I promise I’ll be—”

“No can do. Grandpa’s got big plans that need to be financed by a whole lotta drug money.” He stands and takes out his portal gun. “Come on, we’re going to Blips and Chitz. You can shoot some counsellors in _Roy Reloaded: Revenge of the Rugs_ ; then, m-maybe you’ll stop being such a big pussy. You coming, Sum-Sum?”

Summer shrugs. “Sure, as long as the Wi-Fi implant’s still working.”

Several rug massacres later, Morty feels . . . not much better, but the concept of school does seem more distant. The familiar bitch-slap of intense dissociation and nihilism whenever he resurfaces from a round of _Roy_ is almost worth it for the simultaneous relief of liberation. There is nothing like realising that your eighty-year life was a video game for putting things into perspective. Plus, if he can infiltrate a pro-rug militia as an undercover operative for twenty virtual years, then he can probably deal with one nosy guidance counsellor.

He goes looking for Summer and Rick, and finds them engrossed in _Hot Disaffected Teens Topple the Government_ and _Changing Someone’s Mind on the Internet_ , respectively. Summer’s game display screen shows a Hollywood-ified version of her smoking a joint with her hot, disaffected teen compatriots as they watch the White House burn down. Real Summer is sitting with her VR helmet on, smiling like she is relaxing at a spa. Morty doesn’t bother looking at Rick’s progress because he is sick of listening to Rick bitch about that game for the last two months.

It has been an okay afternoon, so far. An arcade trip is certainly as normal as it gets for a family that stumbles into intergalactic shoot-outs on weekdays. It would be nice if Rick’s kindnesses and cruelties could balance each other out, but he certainly isn’t the type to care about equilibrium for someone else’s sake. Morty will just have to take what he can get.

He watches Game Summer draft a manifesto for a few minutes, then wanders off to spend the rest of his time on pinball.

* * *

It is scorching in the colosseum, white stone reflecting and intensifying sunlight into a heat that presses down on Morty’s body. The stands are packed with spectators, demanding bloodshed in a collective frenzy. Morty grips his axe tightly. He blinks, and a swarm of opponents materialises in the arena, brandishing shoddy weapons with desperate mal-intent.

His first swing slices cleanly through one creature’s neck, flesh and bone yielding like jello. Blood sprays from the stump onto his face like droplets of warm summer rain. The headless body jerks as its nerves die, then topples to the ground.

He fells his next victim by severing three of its legs. Its face is a caricature of shock as it keels over. Morty stomps on its prone head again and again, reducing it to a wet sludge. All the while, the axe moves almost of its own accord, hacking at the onslaught of creatures to turn living things into jagged chunks of meat.

And still they advance, running, slithering, or crawling to their deaths. He doesn’t want to kill. Why won’t they just stop? Why won’t they let him go? He is sick with frustration at the futility of it all, the pointlessness. Morty grits his teeth. He never really had a choice.

In the next second, his axe winks out of existence like a burst soap bubble. He doesn’t have time to miss it before Armothy erupts from his side, his own arm shrinking into a vestigial limb that dangles feebly.

Armothy wastes no time. It crushes the skull of a floating ram’s head, then takes the gore-splattered horns to stab a Gromflamite in the throat. Morty feels something tug at his ankle and snarls when he sees that it is a dying creature making one last idiotic attempt to fight. Armothy grabs a handful of flesh on the creature’s belly and tears, ripping long strips of skin and muscle off the torso like peeling a tangerine. Morty scoops out handfuls of slimy innards and throws them to the side haphazardly. There seems to be an implausible amount of organs, as if more reappear whenever he pulls some out, like a magician tugging a never-ending chain of scarves from their sleeve. When he finally empties the corpse, he is surrounded by piles of lumpy entrails, seeping blood into the sand.

Morty feels wild, alight, ready to wreak vengeance on the entire world for pushing him to this point.

He whirls on his next victim and meets the terrified gaze of . . . his dad. With startling clarity, Morty realises that all the creatures before him are interdimensional versions of Jerry: cephalopod Jerry, gelatin Jerry, Plutonian Jerry—a goddamn smorgasbord of Jerrys. He looks into his father’s pleading eyes and rage rises within him like scalding tar at the thought that this pathetic thing dares to hope for mercy.

Armothy acts before the decision has coalesced in Morty’s mind, plunging two thick fingers into the soft jelly of Jerry’s eyeballs. His eyelids twitch frantically over his destroyed eyes while rivulets of blood run from the mangled eye sockets like red tears. Jerry’s mouth is open in a horrified scream, and sound should be piercing the air, but it is as if someone has pressed “mute” on him. Armothy sticks its four fingers into Jerry’s mouth to curl behind the bottom row of teeth and, with its thumb gripping the underside of Jerry’s chin, tears his jaw off like ripping wet paper.

Suddenly, a shadow blocks out the sun. A gargantuan mass of writhing flesh floats above the arena, an abomination whose lower half is a nest of innumerable tentacles that look like unravelled intestines, with a huge human head for its upper half. Its mournful eyes stare unblinkingly. It has Morty’s face, but not quite. It is a patchwork monstrosity, genetic material from endless Ricks and Mortys spliced together and given torturous sentience. Morty knows, with cold certainty, that it means to absorb him, too.

_I’m like you_ , he says or thinks, and it is true. The Jerrys are gone and the arena is filled with Mortys, each missing a body part. They had been cannibalised to make him, useless things cut apart to create a useless thing. Morty trembles, looks down at his dad’s blood staining his hand—

—and wakes in his sweat-drenched bed. He is breathing so shallowly that he almost hyperventilates, and his heart is a weary weight in his chest. It was a dream, but he has done things that were just as horrible while awake. He knows what he is capable of, the depths of anger and violence that Rick fostered or unmasked. He can never go back to before he became a murderer. His body is heavy with misery.

He can’t stand being alone in his room, staring into the darkness and remembering what it’s like to crush a skull with his bare hand and feel it crack open like an egg. So, he goes to the garage, wanting comfort, but willing to settle for a distraction.

To his disappointment, Rick isn’t there. It is probably for the best; Rick wouldn’t have been much help anyway. Morty is about to creep back up the stairs when he hears the faint sound of a laugh track through the wall. Rick doesn’t like to be bothered in his room, but Morty’s feet carry him there despite his misgivings.

“Rick?” Morty knocks softly on the door. There is no response, so Morty turns the doorknob as quietly as he can and peeks in.

Rick is sitting on the cot with flask in hand, his half-lidded eyes trained lethargically on the tiny TV next to the door. He doesn’t look at Morty or acknowledge him at all. After an awkward hesitation, Morty musters the nerve to speak.

“Um, Rick . . .” he starts, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Rick sighs deeply and finally makes eye contact, his expression somewhere between neutral and annoyed. “What do you want?”

“N-n-nothing!” Morty says, already regretting his decision to come here. ”I . . . um, I guess I thought maybe—maybe you could . . . I don’t know—”

Rick makes a little irritated grunt and swings his legs over to sit on the edge of the cot. “C’mere. Sit.”

Morty obeys eagerly, settling beside Rick. He smells like booze and ozone, and the wiry solidity of him is, at least in this moment, comforting. It makes Morty blurt out, with no preamble, “Y-y-you know, Rick, sometimes I just wonder why we bother.”

“Why we bother with what? You gotta elaborate, Morty. People care unreasonably much about a lot of stupid shit.”

“With this! With any of this! With—with life, a-and g-g-getting up in the morning, and making small talk with cashiers, and doing f-frickin’ laundry!” Morty feels simultaneously hollow and volatile, like he might just as easily burst into tears as beat someone to a pulp. Laughter comes from the TV as if in response.

Rick sighs. “There _is_ no reason, Morty. A-a-an infinite number of Ricks commit suicide, every second, at the same time that an infinite number of Ricks hold out to binge-drink another day. Y-y-you’re dumped into existence drooling and shitting yourself and that’s how you go out. You can’t go around looking for someone to tell you why you shouldn’t blow your own brains out.”

Morty looks up at him hopefully. “So . . . a-are you saying that we make our own meaning? Th-th-that life is meaningful because we give it meaning, like . . . like by creating societies and families and stuff?”

“No, M-Morty. I’m saying that the universe doesn’t give a fuck about you. If God exists—and he doesn’t—then he doesn’t give a fuck about you either. Consciousness is a r-random, meaningless accident, Morty, so stop looking for a reason and just do whatever the fuck you want. B-besides starting a fascist dictatorship to advance a xenophobic agenda. Don’t be that asshole.” Rick whisks out his flask and takes a deep draught, unbothered by a thin trail of saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth.

Morty watches his haggard face and thinks about how they ripped themselves from their original dimension and patched into a new one like they could smush two broken parts together to make a whole. Like there was nothing to miss. Out there in the multi-verse, there must be infinite Mortys who have it worse, infinite who have it better, and infinite who have it exactly the same as he.

Why couldn’t he have a normal grandfather who would take him to baseball games, and bore him with mundane stories about the good old days, and ask for his help with those newfangled smartphones? Instead, he has Rick, whom he addresses by first name like they aren’t even related, like they are friends or equals. What a joke.

A commercial plays in the background, and there is an unreal quality to the announcer’s chipper voice. Morty leans into Rick, grabbing onto his lab coat with one hand and clinging tightly. It would be beyond stupid to view the man as any kind of anchor. Morty feels his own smallness keenly in this moment, as Rick drains his flask, jostling Morty with his movements.

“You wanna watch _Testes Caressers_?” Rick asks gruffly. “It’s a cheap spin-off, but they’ve got some good fart gags and their shitty production value is pretty hilarious.”

“Yeah, okay,” Morty answers, and tries to let this be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> The Rick-Morty amalgamated monster and several other things were pilfered gleefully from the comics.


End file.
